Mathematicians example essay topic

The history of Algebra began in ancient Egypt and Babylon time. Diophantus of Alexandria wrote the first treatise on Algebra in the 3rd century A.D. The term derives from Arabic or literally "the reunion of broken parts". As well as its mathematical meaning, the word also means the surgical treatment of fractures. Ancient civilizations wrote out algebraic expressions using only occasional abbreviations, but by medieval times Islamic mathematicians were able to talk about arbitrarily high powers of the unknown "x", and work out the basic algebra of polynomials (with out yet using modern symbolism).

This included the ability to multiply; divide, and find square roots of polynomials as well as knowledge of the binomial theorem. The Persian Mathematicians, astronomer, and poet Omar Khayyam showed how to express roots of cubic equations by line segments obtained by interesting conic sections, but he could not find a formula for the roots. Early in the 16th century, the Italian Mathematicians, Scipio ne del Ferro, Niccolo Tartaglia, and Girolamo Car dano solved the general cubic equation in terms of the constants appearing in the equation. In the 19th century, however, the Norwegian Mathematician, Niels Abel and the French Mathematician, Evariste Galois proved that no such formula exists. There was an important development in algebraic powers and operations. As a result of this development, book of La geometric in (1637) written by French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes, looks much like modern algebra text.

By the time of Gauss, algebra had entered its modern phrase. Attention shifted from solving polynomial equations to studying the structure of abstract mathematician system whose axioms were based on the behavior of mathematical objects, such as complex numbers, that mathematicians encountered when studying polynomial equations. Groups began as a system of permutations and combinations of roots of polynomials, but they became one the chief unifying concepts of 19th century mathematics. Important contributions to their study were made by the French mathematicians Galois and Augustin Cauchy, the British mathematician Arthur Cayley. After Hamilton's discovery the German mathematician Hermann Grass man began investigating vectors. Despite its abstract character American physicist J.W. Gibbs recognized in vector algebra system of great utility for physicists, just as Hamilton had recognized the usefulness of quaternion.

The end of the third century B. C saw the close of the Golden Age of Greek mathematics. As the next century wore on, political strife work and anarchic conditions in Egypt proved more and more stifling to original scientific work and scholarship at Alexandrian Museum. Alexandria's loss enriched the rest of the Mediterranean world, for learning was noticeably stimulated in those places to which the exiled Alexandrian scholars fled Until Diophantus once more brought fame to the Museum, Alexandria no longer enjoyed the primacy that it had once had over leading Eastern centers of learning. The last two centuries of the pre-Christian era saw the steady and relentless growth of the Roman power. When Rome began to expand outside of peninsular Italy, it first gained mastery over the western half of the Mediterranean basin. Syracuse, though protected by ingenious military machines that the mathematician Archimedes had devise, yielded to siege in 21 B.C., as Carthage did in 202 B.C. Then, after 200 B.C., the Roman armies turned eastward into Greece and Asia Minor.

Greece proper was conquered in 146 B.C., and by 64 B.C. Mesopotamia had fallen before the Roman legions. On the Ides of March in 44 B.C., the daggers of Brutus, Cassius, and their fellow conspirators brought an abrupt end to the reign of Julius Caesar, .